Obamacare

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News/Politics 7-31-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Revolt?

From TheWashingtonPost  “Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), an influential tea party leader, will meet with a group of House Republicans Wednesday to urge them to oppose House Speaker John A. Boehner’s plan to stem the flow of migrant children at the U.S.-Mexico border, according to several House members who plan to attend the 7 p.m. gathering at Cruz’s office.

Cruz’s huddle is the latest example of the combative freshman senator wading into House affairs and serving as an informal whip against the leadership’s immigration position. It is also a direct shot at Boehner’s effort to pass his legislative package, hours before the bill is scheduled to come to the House floor on Thursday.

On Friday, the House adjourns for a five-week recess, leaving Boehner little time to cobble together the votes necessary to pass his proposal. “I think there is sufficient support in the House,” Boehner (R-Ohio) said after a meeting of the House Republican Conference on Tuesday. But he added, “We have a little more work to do.””

The other side too?

From TheHill  “Democratic senators facing tough reelections want to put the brakes on President Obama’s plan to reform the nation’s immigration enforcement system through executive action.

Two of the Senate’s most vulnerable incumbents, Sens. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) and Kay Hagan (D-N.C.), say Obama should not act unilaterally to reduce deportations, arguing it’s Congress’s job to change the law.

Slowing or halting deportations of otherwise law-abiding residents who came to the country illegally could produce a backlash in red states where Obama has low approval numbers. Furthermore, the crisis at the southern U.S. border complicates any move to ease deportation laws.”

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2. LANGUAGE WARNING!!!!

Lois seems to really hate conservatives, which is surprising since the IRS is so non-partisan and all. 🙄

From TheBlaze  “New emails uncovered by the House Ways and Means Committee indicate that former IRS employee Lois Lerner has a strong dislike of some conservatives, and at one point called them “&%@&%@%$” in an email exchange.

The committee released an email Lerner received in November 2012 complaining about the “whacko wing of the GOP.” The person mocked conservatives for believing there are “too many foreigners sucking the teat” and that it is “time to hunker down, buy ammo and food, and prepare for the end.” The person added that the “right wing radio shows are scary to listen to.””

“Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) said this exchange shows the has a “deep animus towards conservatives,” which may have explained her efforts to target conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.

“This email shows that Ms. Lerner’s mistreatment of conservative groups was driven by her personal hostility toward conservatives,” Camp wrote in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder. ”This new evidence clearly demonstrates why Ms. Lerner not only targeted conservatives, but denied such groups their rights to due process and equal protection under the law.””

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3. The House has voted to proceed with a lawsuit against the President.

From TheWashingtonPost  “House Republicans voted to proceed with a lawsuit against President Obama on Wednesday, saying that his executive actions are so extreme that they violate the Constitution.

The nearly party-line vote — all Democrats voted against it, and all but five Republicans voted for it — further agitated an already polarized climate on Capitol Hill as both parties used the pending suit to try to rally support ahead of the November elections.

Halfway across the continent, Obama almost gloated at the prospect of being sued.

“They’re going to sue me for taking executive actions to help people. So they’re mad I’m doing my job,” Obama said in an economics speech in Kansas City, Mo. “And by the way, I’ve told them I’d be happy to do it with you. The only reason I’m doing it on my own is because you’re not doing anything,” he said of Congress.”

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4. 840 million and counting.

From NationalJournal  “The Obama administration has spent roughly $840 million on HealthCare.gov, including more than $150 million just in cost overruns for the version that failed so badly when it launched last year.

The Government Accountability Office says cost overruns went hand-in-hand with the management failures that led to the disastrous launch of HealthCare.gov and the 36 state insurance exchanges it serves.

 GAO’s report, prepared for a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing Thursday, details a long series of management, oversight, and contracting problems that plagued the entire process, from risky contracting practices in 2011 through the botched launch last October.”

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5. Someone call Mikey Weinstein. He’s gonna wanna know about this. I’m sure he’ll attack it with the same ferocity he would if it were done for Christians. 🙄

From FoxNews  “The brigade commander sent an email to military personnel at the facility last month – just before the start of Ramadan – advising them to show respect to Muslim colleagues.”

“This is a period of great personal restraint and commitment in addition to renewed focus on worship,” Brigade Commander Col. Kevin Glasz wrote. “I’d like to encourage you to learn just a little more about this religion, but more importantly, I’m asking you to be considerate and do not consume food or drink in front of our Muslim colleagues; it is a simple, yet respectful action.”

“The brigade commander also provided a link to a website about Islam, and specifically Ramadan.”

““I respect the intention behind this email, but note that there is no similar call honoring other faiths,” one Marine told me. “There is no similar invitation for non-Jewish colleagues to refrain from eating leavened products during Passover, or non-Christian colleagues to refrain from eating meat during Lent.””

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News/Politics 7-29-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Finally, some action.

From MSNNews  “A bipartisan deal to improve veterans’ health care would authorize at least $17 billion to fix the health program scandalized by long patient wait times and falsified records covering up delays, the bill’s chief supporters said Monday.

The agreement includes $10 billion in emergency spending to make it easier for veterans who can’t get prompt appointments with Veterans Affairs doctors to obtain outside care; $5 billion to hire doctors, nurses and other medical staff; and about $1.5 billion to lease 27 new clinics across the country, the chairmen of the House and Senate Veterans Affairs committees said.

The bill also would expand a scholarship program for veterans to include surviving spouses of military members who died in the line of duty, allow all veterans to qualify for in-state college tuition, and grant the Veterans Affairs secretary authority to immediately fire senior executives, while providing employees with streamlined appeal rights.”

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2. Looks like ranchers are the only ones the govt is restricting land access to.

From TheHill  “Federal land protections are hampering efforts to stop the flow of illegal immigrants across the border, Republicans say.

The Interior Department controls about 800 miles along the dividing line with Mexico, or about 40 percent of the total, with other land in the region owned by the Forest Service.

GOP lawmakers argue federal regulations intended to protect land and wildlife have become an obstacle for Customs and Borders Protection officers because they restrict their ability to drive near the border, build infrastructure or install surveillance technology.

“There is no doubt that the restrictions on accessing land along the border have made it more difficult for the Border Patrol to do their job,” said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who traveled to McAllen County, Texas, earlier this month to meet with officials about the surge of child migrants into the United States.”

Smugglers know this too, and are using it to their benefit.

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3. Yet another ObamaCare failure.

From HotAir  “ObamaCare advocates have spent the summer trying to put the sunniest spin possible on the law, and they’d better make the best possible use of the time. Premium increases will hit in the fall as insurers adjust for the less-than-optimal additions to the risk pools in 2014, and the best that advocates can argue is that the average increase percentage might just barely avoid double digits. That, National Journal notes, was the the pace of premium increases without ObamaCare, too; so much for bending cost curves downwards, eh?

This fall, though, it won’t be business as usual for ObamaCare policyholders in another important way. Most people assume that their existing policies will automatically renew, and after all the struggles that these consumers had in getting enrolled the first time around, they had to be looking forward to avoiding the process for 2015. And they’re right about autorenewal, but they’re in for a big surprise about what it means:

If you have health insurance on your job, you probably don’t give much thought to each year’s renewal. But make the same assumption in one of the new health law plans, and it could lead to costly surprises.

Insurance exchange customers who opt for convenience by automatically renewing their coverage for 2015 are likely to receive dated and inaccurate financial aid amounts from the government, say industry officials, advocates and other experts. If those amounts are too low, consumers could get sticker shock over their new premiums. Too high, and they’ll owe the tax man later. …”

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4. Illegal immigrants are demanding representation at White House meetings. I don’t know why they’re whining, they already have it from Obama and his advisers from La Raza.

From TheWashingtonTimes  “Illegal immigrants picketed the White House Monday afternoon, calling on fellow immigrant-rights advocacy groups to refuse to meet with the Obama administration until President Obama specifically includes illegal immigrants in any future meetings.

“We are among the millions of people who will either benefit or be harmed by the decisions the President makes, and we are here to represent ourselves in any future negotiations,” said Rosi Carrasco, one of organizers, in a statement announcing the action.

Billing themselves “undocumented immigrant leaders,” the organizers said they will erect a picket line to symbolize their demand.”

And a real President would have INS there to round them up for deportation. But thankfully for them, we don’t have one of those.

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5. Vive la France!

From MSNNews  “France announced Monday the country would welcome Iraqi Christians forced to leave their homes as ISIS continues to take much of northern Iraq.

In a joint statement, French foreign minister Laurent Fabius and interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve denounced ISIS and extended help to Iraqi Christians.

“France is outraged by these abuses that it condemns with the utmost firmness,” they said. “We are ready, if they so desire, to help facilitate asylum on our territory.”

The announcement followed a rally on Sunday in support of Iraq‘s persecuted Christians, during which about 5,000 people gathered outside Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Geneviève Jacques, president of France’s refugee N.G.O. La Cimade, told France 24 that the country had to offer help as Iraq’s neighboring countries like Jordan, Turkey, and Lebanon have already been flooded by refugees.”

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News/Politics 7-23-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. By now you’ve heard that ObamaCare suffered a defeat in court yesterday. But it had a victory on the same issue in another courtroom.

From TheHill  “A pillar of ObamaCare was put in jeopardy Tuesday as two appeals courts split on whether the law’s premium subsidies are legal in 36 states.

In the first ruling, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals said the Affordable Care Act (ACA) does not permit the IRS to distribute premium subsidies on exchanges established by the federal government.

Hours later, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals came to the opposite conclusion, ruling that the IRS in fact has the authority to issue the subsidies on federally run exchanges because of ambiguity in the law.

The contradictory rulings thrust ObamaCare back into the headlines and raised the possibility of another Supreme Court showdown between the Obama administration and opponents of the new federal healthcare system.”

The Supreme Court will have to decide it I guess.

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2. The White House is asking Israel to do more to prevent civilian casualties.

From NationalReview  “One of President Obama’s top aides urged Israel to “take greater care” than it already does to spare Palestinian lives in its targeted strikes.

Deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday that the administration agrees that Hamas initiated the conflict and that Israel has a right to defend itself.

“At the same time though, we do believe Israel can do more to avoid the types of civilian causalities that we’ve seen in recent days,” Rhodes said. “We’ve been heartbroken at the loss of Palestinian life, the loss of children, so we do believe that Israel has to take greater care to avoid those types of civilian causalities.”

Israel currently goes to great lengths to warn Palestinian civilians of oncoming strikes, providing warnings in the form of text messages and fliers, amid allegations that Hamas uses civilians as human shields and stores weapons in schools and hospitals.”

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3. No such request was made of the Palestinians who are using civilians as human shields. In fact, we’re sending them aid instead. And no condemnation of them storing in rockets in UN run schools either. They’re putting rockets in civilian areas for propaganda purposes so when the Israelis bomb them they can claim they’re targeting schools and civilian areas. And a compliant press plays along.

From TimesOfIsrael  “The State Department defended Secretary of State John Kerry’s decision to grant $15 million in humanitarian aid to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), even as the organization confirmed the discovery of additional rockets stored in one of its Gaza schools. Critics in Washington, however, blasted the secretary’s decision to include UNRWA as a recipient of part of a $47 million humanitarian package designed to aid Gazan civilians.

Israel has long raised eyebrows at the organization, a permanent UN agency separate from the international body’s general refugee relief agency. On Tuesday, UNRWA confirmed that it had found a second major cache of rockets hidden in one of the organization’s schools.

“UNRWA has long overstepped its mandate and has been acting as a political entity with an anti-Israel, anti-Semitic agenda, and the United States shouldn’t be funding it at all. UNRWA has a long history of incitement against Israel in its schools and it certainly has its hands dirty with its ties to Hamas, as Hamas operatives dominate UNRWA’s unions,” said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) on the morning after the announcement.”

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4. Sure, great idea. 🙄

From WatchDog.Org  ” Employers in Illinois can no longer access criminal background checks on potential hires until after an interview is conducted.

Gov. Quinn signed into law this week a bill that prohibits private employers from asking applicants about their criminal history prior to determining if they are qualified for the job.

“Everyone deserves a second chance when it comes to getting a job,” Governor Quinn said in a press release. “This law will help ensure that people across Illinois get a fair shot to reach their full potential through their skills and qualifications, rather than past history. It will also help reduce recidivism, fight poverty and prevent violence in our communities by putting more people back to work.”

“The Job Opportunities for Qualified Applicants Act, also referred to as the “ban the box” bill in reference to the box on many application forms asking applicants if they are a convicted criminal, makes Illinois the fifth state to restrict pre-interview criminal background checks.”

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5. California’s water problems are continuing to worsen.

From TheLATimes  “The groundwater level in the San Bernardino Basin area is at its lowest point in recorded history, officials say.

Measured in volume, the groundwater level for the basin is now about 500,000 acre-feet below full, according to Douglas Headrick, general manager for the San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District.

That would put it below the previous low recorded in 1964, a period that followed a 20-year drought, officials said.”

““This isn’t just an issue for San Bernardino, but many other cities depend on this basin for much of their water supply, including Redlands, Highland, Loma Linda, Rialto, Colton and Riverside,” the district’s water resource manager, Bob Tincher, said.”

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by

News/Politics 7-18-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Interesting. It’s a small sample, but it appears to blow the President and Democrats line about fleeing violence out of the water. They blame his policies and lack of border enforcement.

From FoxNews  “A new intelligence assessment concludes that misperceptions about U.S. immigration policy – and not Central American violence – are fueling the surge of thousands of children illegally crossing the Mexican border.

The 10-page July 7 report was issued by the El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC), which according to the Justice Department website is led by the DEA and incorporates Homeland Security. Its focus is on the collection and distribution of tactical intelligence, information which can immediately be acted on by law enforcement.

“Of the 230 migrants interviewed, 219 cited the primary reason for migrating to the United States was the perception of U.S. immigration laws granting free passes or permisos to UAC (unaccompanied children) and adult females OTMs (other than Mexicans) traveling with minors,” the report said.”

“The intelligence assessment, which is unclassified but not meant to go beyond law enforcement, also cited data from the United Nations office on Drugs and Crime Statistics saying despite an explosion in the number of illegal minors, crime data for Central America actually showed a dip in violence.”

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2. Anti-gun folks won’t like this. More guns = less crime.

From HotAir  “Via Bob Owens at Bearing Arms, a leftover from yesterday that shouldn’t be missed. Detroit PD chief James Craig has spent the past six months encouraging locals to arm themselves, an unusual — and politically perilous — position for a big city police officer to take. No regrets.

Detroit has experienced 37 percent fewer robberies in 2014 than during the same period last year, 22 percent fewer break-ins of businesses and homes, and 30 percent fewer carjackings. Craig attributed the drop to better police work and criminals being reluctant to prey on citizens who may be carrying guns.

“Criminals are getting the message that good Detroiters are armed and will use that weapon,” said Craig, who has repeatedly said he believes armed citizens deter crime. “I don’t want to take away from the good work our investigators are doing, but I think part of the drop in crime, and robberies in particular, is because criminals are thinking twice that citizens could be armed.

“I can’t say what specific percentage is caused by this, but there’s no question in my mind it has had an effect,” Craig said.”

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3. The White House is bribing insurance companies to try and delay the damage before mid-terms.

From Forbes  “Want to know what’s happening with Obamacare? Good luck finding out. The White House recently adopted a new approach for updating Americans on the country’s most consequential law. I call it the “needle in a haystack” method: Bury the announcement in hundreds of pages of regulations and hope no one finds it.

The White House tried a test run several weeks ago. Hidden in the midst of a 436 page regulatory update, and written in pure bureaucratese, the Department of Health and Human Services asked that insurance companies limit the looming premium increases for 2015 health plans. But don’t worry, HHS hinted: we’ll bail you out on the taxpayer’s dime if you lose money.

No wonder there wasn’t a press release. The White House is playing politics with Americans’ health care—and they’re bribing health insurance companies to play along.

The administration’s intention is clear: Salvage the 2014 midterm elections. Typically, insurance companies release their premium rates between summer and early fall—i.e., right before voters cast their ballots in November. If premiums skyrocket—which looks increasingly likely—then voters won’t look too kindly on Senators and Representatives who voted for Obamacare and created this problem.”

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4. Looks like those ObamaCare navigators were a waste of money.

From TheWeeklyStandard  “During the open enrollment period for the state and federal health care exchanges, each staff member and volunteer worked with an average of 1.8 people per day, according to a survey of assister programs released by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser calculated the number of people receiving aid between October 1, 2013 and the end of April, 2014:

More than 4,400 Assister Programs, employing more than 28,000 full-time-equivalent staff and volunteers, helped an estimated 10.6 million people during the first Open Enrollment period.

If you do the math, 28,000 individuals assisting 10.6 million people over 210 days breaks down to 1.8 people per day per service representative. While the individualized guidance was time consuming, the study revealed that the assister programs should have been able to help more people in the span of a full workday. The questionnaire answers indicated that 64 percent of the programs spent an average of 1-2 hours with each person, 18 percent took 2-3 hours, and just five percent exceeded three hours.”

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5. The VA is saying they need 17 billion to stop mistreating veterans.

From HotAir  “In which the agency that’s been giving millions in bonuses to people for causing and lying about the untimely deaths of veterans asks for the GDPs of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Anguilla, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Equatorial Guinea combined from taxpayers to stop doing that. Super:

The Department of Veterans Affairs needs $17.6 billion in additional funds over the next three years to meet patients’ needs and fix the troubled agency’s problems, its acting director said Wednesday.

Testifying for the first time on Capitol Hill, interim VA Secretary Sloan Gibson told the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee that the money would help VA medical centers decrease appointment waiting times and hire more doctors.

You perhaps won’t be surprised to find this request is a-ok with Democrats while Republicans wonder how more money is going to solve this problem when the increasing backlog and problems at the Veterans Administration correlated with a rapidly increasing budget. And, in the case of the aforementioned bonuses, more money actually caused the problems.”

And that’s on top of the money already in current reform packages.

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6. How to renounce America, and still be called a patriot, at least by other hypocrites.

From NationalJournal  “This story is about a gilded class of people and corporations enriched by the new American economy while the rest of its citizens pay the tab. The protagonists could be any number of institutional elites, but this column happens to be about a Democratic senator from West Virginia, Joe Manchin, and his daughter, Heather Bresch, the chief executive of Mylan, a giant maker of generic drugs based outside Pittsburgh.

Her company’s profits come largely from Medicaid and Medicare, which means her nest is feathered by U.S. taxpayers. On Monday, Bresch announced that Mylan will renounce its United States citizenship and instead become incorporated in the Netherlands – leaving this country, in part, to pay less in taxes.

This is the sort of story that makes blood boil in populists – voters from the Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic Party to libertarians who follow Rand Paul and including tea party conservatives. These disillusioned souls, growing in numbers, hate hypocrites who condemn the U.S. political system while gaming it.

Populists can’t be happy with how this story was told by Andrew Ross Sorkin of the New York Times. Under the headline “Reluctantly, Patriot Flees Homeland for Greener Tax Pastures,” Sorkin cast Bresch as a helpless victim of a system that has made her wealthy and her father powerful.”

Oh the poor things… 🙄

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by

News/Politics 7-16-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Well I’m sure the world will be happy to hear this…..

🙄

From CNSNews  “White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Monday the Obama administration’s foreign policies in a number of areas have enhanced the world’s “tranquility” – a word that raised eyebrows as reporters pointed to situations in Gaza, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Ukraine and the South China Sea.

More than one reporter during Monday’s press briefing referred to a front-page Wall Street Journal article highlighting some of those crises, and citing security strategists as saying “the breadth of global instability now unfolding hasn’t been seen since the late 1970s.”

“How does the White House react to the notion that the president is a bystander to all these crises?” asked Fox News’ Ed Henry, citing the widening gaps between the sides in the Iranian nuclear talks, the conflict in and around Gaza, and the Syrian civil war.

“I think that there have been a number of situations in which you’ve seen this administration intervene in a meaningful way, that has substantially furthered American interests and substantially improved the, uh, you know, the – the tranquility of the global community,” Earnest replied.”

Uh, you know, places like Syria, Egypt, Libya, Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa, the Mexican border, etc., etc.,…. The places where Obama’s intervened in a meaningful way. 🙄

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2. Good. And while it’s bad that they may not be able to catch all the cheats, it’s still better than giving them the resources if they’re going to misuse them on political witch hunts anyway.

From TheAP  “The GOP-controlled House has voted to slash the budget for the Internal Revenue Service’s tax enforcement division by $1.2 billion, a 25 percent cut that would mean fewer audits of taxpayers and make it more likely that people who cheat on their taxes will get away with it.

The House approved the cuts by voice vote after little debate Monday night as it took up a $21 billion spending bill that sets the IRS budget.

The cuts reflect GOP outrage over the agency’s scrutiny of tea party groups seeking tax-exempt status and frustration over the agency’s failure to produce thousands of emails by Lois Lerner, the official formerly in charge of the IRS division that processes applications for tax-exempt status.

“The use of a government agency to harass, target, intimidate and threaten lawful, honest citizens was the worst form of authoritarianism,” said Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., author of an amendment to cut the IRS tax enforcement budget by $353 million. Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Mich., followed up with an amendment to cut $788 million more. The underlying bill already contained a $72 million cut from last year’s $5 billion enforcement budget, bringing the total cut to $1.2 billion.”

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3. Gee, maybe this is why they stopped touting their bogus enrollees number.

From TheWeeklyStandard  “In March 2010, Obamacare was about to be voted upon by the House of Representatives, and the Democrats were in the process of deciding whether to ignore public opinion at their peril.  At that time, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that Obamacare would cost $938 billion over a decade and would reduce the number of uninsured people by 19 million as of 2014 (with a reduction of 1 million prior to 2014 and 18 million in 2014 alone).  Unimpressed, the American people overwhelmingly opposed the intrusive overhaul — with 20 of 21 polls taken that month showing it to be unpopular, most of them by double digits. The Democrats willfully passed Obamacare anyway and lost 63 House seats that November.

Two years later, the Supreme Court declared Obamacare’s coercive Medicaid expansion to be unconstitutional as written, and the CBO adjusted its projection for the number of uninsured accordingly.  It projected that Obamacare would reduce the number of uninsured by 14 million as of 2014 (2 million before 2014 and 12 million in 2014 alone), at a 10-year cost of $1.677 trillion — or $739 billion more than the 2010 projection.  (This February, the CBO projected that Obamacare’s 10-year cost would eclipse $2 trillion.)

n February of this year, the CBO projected that Obamacare would reduce the number of uninsured by 13 million as of 2014.  In April, the CBO had seen enough of the Obama administration’s skillful rollout of Obamacare to reduce that estimate to 12 million.

Now the Urban Institute finds that Obamacare has actually reduced the number of uninsured adults by 8 million since the rollout began last fall.  (Gallup shows a similar number.)  That’s far short of the number of newly insured that the CBO projected in April of this year, in February of this year, or in 2012 — and it’s less than half the tally the American people were told Obamacare would hit when they opposed it in 2010. “

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4. The problems at the VA continue.

From TheWashingtonTimes  “The VA’s rush to cut a huge backlog of claims from disabled veterans has forced it to cut corners elsewhere, and yet the department is still botching about one out of every 10 claims decisions, top officials and whistleblowers testified to Congress on Monday, signaling that the problems go far beyond the hospital wait times that have plagued it.

The very program the Obama administration started to years ago to cut the backlog has resulted in bad decisions that have forced many veterans into a lengthy appeals process, and created backlogs in other claims such as dependents’ benefits, members of the House Veterans Affairs Committee concluded.”

“These are veterans. I mean, somebody would be asleep at the wheel not to realize these things were going up,” said Ronald Robinson, a senior veterans service representative, former Army first sergeant, and one of three whistleblowers to testify.

In one dramatic moment, committee Chairman Jeff Miller, Florida Republican, posted a handwritten note one of his staffers had seen on a site visit to Philadelphia in which a top regional VA executive had written that committee investigators were to be ignored, and that singled out known whistleblowers.”

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5. I have no problem with charges of vandalism and destruction of public property charges for the perps. But a hate crime? Really? Now they’re just being stupid. 🙄

From CarrollCountyTimes  “Maryland State Police have classified anti-immigration graffiti spray painted on the former Army Reserve Center in Westminster as a hate crime. The graffiti was sprayed sometime Saturday night or early Sunday morning, according to Lt. Patrick McCrory, commander of the state police Westminster barracks.

The graffiti said “NO ILLEAGLES [sic] HERE NO UNDOCUMENTED DEMOCRATS.”

It was spray-painted on the front of the Army Reserve Center, which recently became embroiled in controversy when the Obama administration considered using the facility to house immigrant children caught crossing the US-Mexico border illegally.

The Carroll County Board of Commissioners spoke out against the federal government’s plan on Friday during an emergency cabinet meeting. Commissioners attending the meeting pledged not to provide any assistance to federal agencies if or when they moved the children to the facility. “

Who’s the genius leading the investigation, Joe Biden? 🙄

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News/Politics 7-8-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Most transparent administration evah!

From NationalReview  “Health and Human Services officials will allow reporters to visit a military facility housing some of the immigrant children who have arrived at the southern border in recent weeks, but only if the media promises not to record anything, not to ask any questions during the tour, and not to talk to any of the staff members or children.

“This violates the First Amendment,” Representative Jim Bridenstine (R., Okla.), who represents the congressional district containing the housing facility at Fort Sill, said of the HHS invitation to the media.  “This is not transparent. HHS is trying to muzzle the media and hide the human tragedy that has resulted directly from the administration’s failure to enforce the law.”

HHS attached seven rules “in order to protect the safety and privacy of the children” for the media who come to the tour, according to an HHS invitation released by Bridenstine’s office:”

Oh. I see.

It’s for the children. 🙄

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2. This is why I don’t believe amnesty groups or the Chamber of Commerce when they say the visa program for foreign workers needs to be expanded. It doesn’t.

From TheAP  “The dream didn’t last long. Parker claims she was laid off one year later after she trained her replacement, a newly arrived worker from India. Now she has joined a federal lawsuit alleging the global staffing firm that ran Harley-Davidson’s tech support discriminated against American workers — in part by replacing them with temporary workers from South Asia.

The firm, India-based Infosys Ltd., denies wrongdoing and contends, as many companies do, that it has faced a shortage of talent and specialized skill sets in the U.S. Like other firms, Infosys wants Congress to allow even more of these temporary workers.

But amid calls for expanding the nation’s so-called H-1B visa program, there is growing pushback from Americans who argue the program has been hijacked by staffing companies that import cheaper, lower-level workers to replace more expensive U.S. employees — or keep them from getting hired in the first place.

“It’s getting pretty frustrating when you can’t compete on salary for a skilled job,” said Rich Hajinlian, a veteran computer programmer from the Boston area. “You hear references all the time that these big companies … can’t find skilled workers. I am a skilled worker.”

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3. The Hobby Lobby case continues to anger liberals, even the dissenters to the opinion.

From HotAir  “After the Hobby Lobby decision, a number of people pointed to a reference to the so-called “accommodation” for religious-oriented organizations in the HHS contraception mandate to conclude that the Supreme Court’s decision would be limited to the for-profit sector, and only to certain methods of contraception. A series of orders the next day showed the latter was not true, and a decision late yesterday suggests the former isn’t, either. An emergency injunction on behalf of Wheaton College sparked the ire of three Supreme Court justices, who issued an angry dissent to the unsigned order that temporarily sets aside the “accommodation”:

Today, the Supreme Court granted Wheaton College an injunction pending appeal against enforcement of the contraception mandate, even though Wheaton was eligible for the accommodation HHS has provided for religious non-profits.  Specifically the Court ordered:

If the applicant informs the Secretary of Health and Human Services in writing that it is a non-profit organization that holds itself out as religious and has religious objections to providing coverage for contraceptive services, the respondents are enjoined from enforcing against the applicant the challenged provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and related regulations pending final disposition of appellate review. To meet the condition for injunction pending appeal, the applicant need not use the form prescribed by the Government, EBSA Form 700, and need not send copies to health insurance issuers or third-party administrators.

This prompted three of the four dissenters in Hobby Lobby to issue a statement scolding the rest of the court for ignoring what they claim had been decided on Monday:”

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4. ISIS is set to destroy some biblical history.

From YahooNews  “No trace ever has been found of the Garden of Eden, said to have lain near the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates, but one of the great prizes the excavators did discover was Senaccherib’s capital, Nineveh, which the biblical prophet Nahum called “the city of blood, full of lies, full of plunder, never without victims!”

Last month, a new marauder descended on Nineveh and the nearby city of Mosul. He, too, came down like the wolf on the fold, but his cohorts brandished Kalashnikovs from pickup trucks, not shining spears; their banners were the black flags of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham.

Soon afterward the minions of the self-appointed caliph of the freshly self-declared Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, paid a visit to the Mosul Museum. It has been closed for years for restoration, ever since it was looted along with many of Iraq’s other institutions in the wake of the culturally oblivious American-led invasion of 2003. But the Mosul Museum was on the verge of reopening, at last, and the full collection had been stored there.

“These groups of terrorists—their arrival was a brutal shock, with no warning,” Iraqi National Museum Director Qais Hussein Rashid told me when he visited Paris last week with a mission pleading for international help. “We were not able to take preventive measures.””

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5. But the President said ObamaCare would shorten ER waits because folks would have a regular doctor. Guess that promise had an expiration date too.

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6. And since the other ObamaCare shoe (the employer mandate) is about to drop, the President is trying to pre-empt the sticker shock.

From HotAir  “And well they might. Insurers got a close look at the profiles of the enrollees in the individual health-insurance market this spring, and they turned out to be sicker than projected, as the “young invincibles” took a pass on ObamaCare in 2014. That means that premiums will go up in the fall in order to cover the added expense of the higher-risk enrollments — and that has the Obama administration spin team working extra hard this summer to cover their rear ends just before the midterms:

Most state health insurance rates for 2015 are scheduled to be approved by early fall, and most are likely to rise, timing that couldn’t be worse for Democrats already on defense in the midterms.

The White House and its allies know they’ve been beaten in every previous round of Obamacare messaging, never more devastatingly than in 2010. And they know the results this November could hinge in large part on whether that happens again.

So they’re trying to avoid — or at least, get ahead of — any September surprise.

This assumes that the problems with ObamaCare only have to do with messaging. That’s only true to the extent that the previous messaging from the administration has been proven either entirely wrong or flat-out lies. “You can keep your plan” ended up as the Lie of the Year for 2013 when millions of people who already had insurance got kicked out of their existing plans for 2014, and forced to pay more for less coverage in many instances. Barack Obama had promised that his reforms would lower premiums by $2500 a year for a family of four, but premiums have skyrocketed since the passage of ObamaCare, and they’ll do the same again in September.”

Messaging isn’t the problem. Your product sucks, and is too expensive. That’s the problem.

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News/Politics 7-7-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Did ObamaCare make matters worse at the VA and contribute to the backlog in processing VA claims? Sure sounds like it.

From TruthRevolt   “A Veterans Affairs whistleblower from Atlanta will testify before Congress next Tuesday about widespread destruction of applications, retaliation against whistleblowers, and people being shifted from processing VA applications last summer to working on Obamacare enrollment.

Scott Davis is a program specialist at the VA’s national Health Eligibility Center in DeKalb County, Georgia. His story was published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution this past Sunday and appeared on the Neil Cavuto program on Fox News Wednesday.  As opposed to previous whistleblower reports, which focus VA hospitals and getting to see doctors, Davis’ revelations are about the processing of applications by VA offices.  

Davis told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that health benefit applications for more than 10,000 veterans may have been improperly purged from the Health Eligibility Center’s national data system. He began filing complaints in January 2014, revealing that managers were focused more on meeting goals linked to the Affordable Care Act to meet their bonus targets than processing VA applications.

We don’t discuss veterans. We do not work for veterans. That is something that I learned after working there. Our customer is the VA central office, the White House and the Congress. The veterans are not our priority. So whatever the initiatives are or the big ticket items, that is what we focus on.”

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2. And as always, the Obama admin has retaliated against the whistleblower. That’s easier than fixing the problems they’re pointing out.

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3. Don’t you just love bi-partisan acts by Congress? It’s so nice when the parties both agree……

to quietly change the rules for reporting freebies they receive from lobbyists. 🙄

From IJReview  “A member of Congress used to have to specifically report the details if they traveled on someone else’s dime. As of last week, that rule was lifted with no public announcement. National Journal reports:

The move, made behind closed doors and without a public announcement by the House Ethics Committee, reverses more than three decades of precedent. Gifts of free travel to lawmakers have appeared on the yearly financial form dating back its creation in the late 1970s, after the Watergate scandal. National Journal uncovered the deleted disclosure requirement when analyzing the most recent batch of yearly filings.

For a group of officials that considers an adjustment to their burrito order worthy of a press release and a television appearance, that this change was made literally behind closed doors tells us everything we need to know about it. Members of both parties reached across the aisle and kept their mouths shut about it.

These trips still must be reported to the Office of the Clerk and disclosed there, but the decades-old requirement for individual members to also disclose their particular activities on their annual financial forms is now gone.”

They still report it, but now it’s in an area where no one would look. Now that’s transparency.

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4. The Obama EPA continues to expand it’s illegal power grabs. Control the water, you control the people. Just ask California.

Also From TheIJReview  “The Environmental Protection Agency is planning to expand its jurisdiction over the nation’s waterways under the Clean Water Act to include ditches, small streams, ponds, and other purely local waterways.

Nearly 204,000 comments have been received since the rule was proposed on April 21, 2014, mostly from Americans opposed to it. Ten U.S. senators also sent a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy expressing their concerns about the proposed rule changes.

Among the examples of potential overreach the senators cite are attempts by environmentalists to ban fireworks at Lake Tahoe along the border of California and Nevada. The senators fear the expanded EPA jurisdiction could led to similar lawsuits in other places.”

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5. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before….

Less people working, plus a lowering unemployment number, equals fuzzy math. Again.

From CNSNews  “The number of Americans 16 and older who did not participate in the labor force climbed to a record high of 92,120,000 in June, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

This means that there were 92,120,000 Americans 16 and older who not only did not have a job, but did not actively seek one in the last four weeks.

That is up 111,000 from the 92,009,000 Americans who were not participating in the labor force in April.”

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by

News/Politics 7-2-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Hobby Lobby hobbyhorse, and why liberals should get off of theirs.

From BloombergView  “After reading the Twitter reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the Hobby Lobby case, I began researching a post on what women could do now that corporations have exactly the same rights people do, including playing power forward for the Miami Heat, and now that contraception has been outlawed throughout these great United States. Then I read the decision and, to my surprise, found that it didn’t quite say any of that.

So what does it say? The court found that owners of closely held corporations have the same rights as sole proprietors under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. They cannot be forced to violate their religious beliefs unless the government can genuinely find no other way to achieve a compelling public purpose.

But that sounds so boring compared to War on Women! And so that’s the narrative the Internet chose. Here’s a representative tweet from my feed this morning:

So let’s all deny women birth control & get closer to harass them when they’re going in for repro health services. BECAUSE FREEDOM.

Logically, this is incoherent, unless you actually believe that it is impossible to buy birth control without a side payment from your employer. (If you are under this tragic misimpression, then be of good cheer! Generic birth control pills are available from the drugstore for about $25 a month.)“

Or Wal-Mart has them for $9. But I guess mentioning Wal-Mart to a liberal would upset them too, so they would just climb back on their hobbyhorses again.

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2. The Supreme Court decision is already causing consequences for some other cases.

From HotAir  “Late yesterday, the first fruits of the Hobby Lobby decision fell into the lap of EWTN, the Catholic satellite television station which has fought the HHS mandate into the appellate court. Today would have been the first day that EWTN would have to start paying ruinous fines for refusing to provide free contraception and sterilization in its health insurance coverage. Fortunately, the Eleventh Circuit granted a stay not long after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby:

In a resounding victory for religious freedom, today EWTN was granted last minute relief from the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, one day before the world’s largest religious media network would be forced to violate its deeply help religious convictions or pay crippling fines to the IRS on July 1.

After the district judge recently issued a disappointing ruling against the global Catholic media network, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty filed an emergency appeal to the Eleventh Circuit. Pending that ruling, the Becket Fund urged the Supreme Court and the Eleventh Circuit to step in to protect EWTN from being forced to provide contraceptives and potentially life-terminating drugs and devices that violate its Catholic teachings. Thanks to the Eleventh Circuit’s decision today to grant temporary emergency relief to the Catholic network, EWTN can now freely practice what it preaches while it pursues its claims in court.

“On the same day as the Hobby Lobby decision, the Eleventh Circuit protected religious ministries challenging the same government mandate,” said Lori Windham, Senior Counsel at the Becket Fund. “It’s time for the government to stop fighting ministries like EWTN and the Little Sisters of the Poor, and start respecting religious freedom.”

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3. So how’s the ObamaCare website working out now that they fixed the problems?

Oh wait, no, they didn’t. 🙄

From FoxNews  “The Obama administration is struggling to resolve data discrepancies that could jeopardize coverage for millions who sought health insurance on the federal exchange HealthCare.gov, according to a watchdog report on the still-rocky implementation of ObamaCare. 

Though the system’s troubles have faded from the headlines since the problem-plagued launch last October, a report from the health department inspector general provided the first independent look at widespread issues the government is having effectively fact-checking the information applicants are putting in the system. 

According to the report, the administration was unable to resolve 2.6 million so-called “inconsistencies” out of a total of 2.9 million such problems from October through December 2013. “

So much for that magic 7 million number huh?

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4. Once again, the Obama admin seeks to silence potential whistleblowers with threats.

Also From FoxNews  “A government-contracted security force threatened to arrest doctors and nurses if they divulged any information about the contagion threat at a refugee camp housing illegal alien children at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, sources say.

In spite of the threat, several former camp workers broke their confidentiality agreements and shared exclusive details with me about the dangerous conditions at the camp. They said taxpayers deserve to know about the contagious diseases and the risks the children pose to Americans. I have agreed to not to disclose their identities because they fear retaliation and prosecution.

“There were several of us who wanted to talk about the camps, but the agents made it clear we would be arrested,” a psychiatric counselor told me. “We were under orders not to say anything.”

The sources said workers were guarded by a security force from the Baptist Family & Children’s Services, which the Department of Health and Human Services hired to run the Lackland Camp.”

Wait a minute…. Baptists have a security force?

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5. Yesterday I posted a video about allegations of vote buying against the Cochran campaign in Mississippi. Here’s a very detailed breakdown of the evidence so far.

From RedState  “An audio interview has surfaced in which the interviewee claims that he was to be paid by the Cochran camp to grease voters in the Mississippi GOP Senate runoff election. The audio interview, which coincides with a separate audio recording and batch of evidence produced by the newly launched GotNews.com, a project by Charles C. Johnson, alleges that the Cochran campaign conspired with a Mississippi Reverend to buy the votes of African American voters, who happen to be democrats.

Before I get into the weeds of what is in the audio interview and transcript, which are both below, let me set up the stage a bit. What is alleged to have occurred is illegal and very serious business. Under Mississippi law the alleged crimes could lead to Thad Cochran being removed from the Senate. Everything that follows comes from sources either on the ground in Mississippi, or those working closely with them.”

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News/Politics 7-1-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. As I’m sure you’ve heard, the Supreme Court sided with Hobby Lobby over the ObamaCare contraceptive mandate. Despite that fact the ruling was a narrow one tailored to this case, and not the doom and gloom opening of the flood gates they’d like you to believe, the political left is losing their minds over it. While they’re a bit over-dramatic, it’s still fun to watch. 🙂

From HotAir  “I imagine the horrified shrieks that rose from the streets outside the Supreme Court on Monday as the decision in the Hobby Lobby case began to filter out into the crowd of liberal observers was reminiscent of those poor souls who watched helplessly as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire claimed the lives of 146 young, female garment workers.

In fact, the similarities are eerie. It seems that liberal commentators have convinced themselves that, just as was the case in 1911, the courts and the country have deemed women to be of lesser value than their male counterparts. The distinction between these two eras, of course, is that while that argument could be supported in 1911, it exists only in the heads of progressives in 2014.

NBC News journalist Pete Williams, an accomplished reporter who is not prone to indulge in speculation, went out of his way to insist repeatedly that the Court’s decision in this case was a narrow one. He noted that the decision extends only to the specific religious objections a handful of employers raised about providing abortifacients (as opposed to contraceptives). Williams added that Justice Anthony Kennedy allowed in his concurring opinion that the federal government can pay for and provide that coverage if employers would not.

The Federalist published a variety of other observations about this ruling which indicate that it was narrowly tailored to this specific case. The Court ruled that Hobby Lobby and other employers could not simply drop health coverage in order to avoid mandates. This decision does not apply to other government mandates like those requiring employers cover vaccinations. Finally, if the will of the public in the form of an electoral mandate creates a groundswell of support for a government-funded program which provides access to abortifacients, then that would be perfectly constitutional.”

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2. The Court also ruled against forced unionization of home care workers.

From TheFreeBeacon  “The Supreme Court ruled Monday in Harris v. Quinn that politicians can no longer force family members caring for disabled relatives into public sector unions.

In a 5-4 ruling, the court found the state of Illinois violated the constitution when imprisoned former Gov. Rod Blagojevich agreed to funnel a portion of home healthcare worker checks to political allies SEIU and AFSCME. The unions collected more than $50 million from about 20,000 such people over a five-year period.

The decision, authored by Samuel Alito, did not completely limit the ability of public sector unions to collect dues from employees who do not want to join unions. However, the court recognized a category of “partial public employees” and ruled that fees cannot be forcefully extracted from these people.

“PAs are much different from public employees,” Alito’s decision read. “Unlike full-fledged public employees, PAs are almost entirely answerable to the customers and not to the State, do not enjoy most of the rights and benefits that inure to state employees, and are not indemnified by the State for claims against them arising from actions taken during the course of their employment.”

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3. Despite his and his supporters claims about his legal prowess and constitutional scholarliness, Obama continues to lose in court on constitutional issues. It’s almost like they’ve over-hyped the guy. 🙄

From TheWashingtonTimes  “President Obama suffered two final defeats in the Supreme Court on Monday, capping a 2013-2014 term in which the justices delivered several judicial hits to the White House while taking a firm stand against the unchecked power of the state.

The administration’s losses on Obamacare rules and compulsory union dues served as a rebuke on the Supreme Court’s final day after months of judicial decisions to rein in big government on issues such as snooping without a warrant, campaign finance restrictions and Mr. Obama’s recess appointment powers.

Just as damning was the way the court ruled in some of those cases. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. corralled unanimous votes on privacy and recess appointments — cases that dealt stinging defeats to Mr. Obama, himself a lawyer and former lecturer on constitutional law.

In the more than five years that Mr. Obama has been in office, the court has rejected the government’s argument with a 9-0 decision 20 times. During the eight years each in the administrations of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, the government lost on unanimous votes 15 times and 23 times, respectively. That puts the Obama administration on pace to greatly exceed recent predecessors in terms of judicial losses.”

Don’t believe the hype.

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4. Maybe part of Obama’s problem is he speaks a different language, the language of despotism.

From Hoover.org  “Long before 1984 gave us the adjective “Orwellian” to describe the political corruption of language and thought, Thucydides observed how factional struggles for power make words their first victims. Describing the horrors of civil war on the island of Corcyra during the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides wrote, “Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them.” Orwell explains the reason for such degradation of language in his essay “Politics and the English Language”: “Political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.”

Tyrannical power and its abuses comprise the “indefensible” that must be verbally disguised. The gulags, engineered famines, show trials, and mass murder of the Soviet Union required that it be a “regime of lies,” as the disillusioned admirer of Soviet communism Pierre Pascal put it in 1927.

Our own political and social discourse must torture language in order to disguise the failures and abuses of policies designed to advance the power and interests of the “soft despotism,” as Tocqueville called it, of the modern Leviathan state and its political caretakers. Meanwhile, in foreign policy the transformation of meaning serves misguided policies that endanger our security and interests.”

“No foreign policy crisis, however, is more illustrative of the “regime of lies” and abuse of language to serve “indefensible” aims than the conflict between Israel and the Arabs. The Arabs’ aim, of course, is to destroy Israel as a nation, a policy they have consistently pursued since 1948. Since military attacks have failed ignominiously, an international public relations campaign coupled to terrorist violence has been employed to weaken Israel’s morale and separate Israel from her Western allies. An Orwellian assault on language has been key to this tactic.”

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News/Politics 6-30-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Pass the popcorn. this is getting interesting.

From Time  “Attorney General Eric Holder must appoint a special prosecutor to investigate IRS targeting of conservative groups or expect to face impeachment proceedings, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said on the chamber floor Thursday.

“When an Attorney General mocks the rule of law, when an Attorney General corrupts the Department of Justice by conducting a nakedly partisan investigation to cover up political wrongdoing that conduct by any reasonable measure constitutes high crimes and misdemeanors,” said Cruz. “Attorney General Eric Holder has the opportunity to do the right thing. He could appoint a special prosecutor with meaningful independence who is not a major Obama donor.”

The donor Cruz is referring to is Justice Department prosecutor Barbara Bosserman, who has given $6,750 to the Democratic Party and President Obama over the past ten years, according to the Washington Post. Bosserman has been chosen to lead the Justice Department probe into the IRS.

Cruz and other conservatives are dismayed that the Justice Department has yet to indict anyone 13 months after the IRS admitted that it targeted nonprofit political advocacy groups with the terms “tea party” or “patriot” in their names from 2010 to 2012.”

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2. A decision is expected today in the Hobby Lobby case against the contraceptive mandate. But it will it really solve anything either way?

From NationalJournal  “The justices are set to rule any day now in a challenge to the birth-control mandate, and any decision against the policy would have ripple effects far beyond the two companies that filed this lawsuit. Just how far, however, depends on how broadly the Court rules—and it has plenty of options.

No matter what happens, the Court won’t strike down the entire mandate. The two companies that brought their challenge to the Supreme Court—Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties—haven’t asked the justices to ax the entire policy.

The most sweeping option is a broad First Amendment proclamation that all corporations have a fundamental right to exercise religion, in this case by refusing to cover birth control in their employees’ health care plans. This outcome would be almost a sequel to the Citizens United case on campaign finance laws and free speech. It would probably open the door for any company to challenge a slew of state or federal regulations, and would allow any corporation to avoid the contraception mandate—potentially affecting millions of women.

But a sweeping First Amendment ruling might not be the most likely option, based on the questions Justice Anthony Kennedy asked during oral arguments and Chief Justice John Roberts’s general preference for narrower decisions. The Court could easily go smaller if it sides with Hobby Lobby.”

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3. In other ObamaCare news….

From TheLATimes  “rustration and legal challenges over the network of doctors and hospitals for Obamacare patients have marred an otherwise successful rollout of the federal healthcare law in California.

Limiting the number of medical providers was part of an effort by insurers to hold down premiums. But confusion over the new plans has led to unforeseen medical bills for some patients and prompted a state investigation.

More complaints are surfacing as patients start to use their new coverage bought through Covered California, the state’s health insurance exchange.

“I thought I had done everything right, and it’s been awful,” said Jean Buchanan, 56. The Fullerton resident found herself stuck with an $8,000 bill for cancer treatment after receiving conflicting information on whether it was covered. “How am I going to come up with that much money?”

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4. So as I suspected, it was all for show. That’s why he walked around free and giving interviews to the press for 2 years after the attack. The trial should be a real dog and pony show.

From FoxNews  “Despite President Obama’s promise to stay focused on hunting down those responsible for the 2012 Benghazi attack — and despite a recent arrest touted as a major takedown — sources say little has been done to nab the other suspects. 

According to multiple sources on the ground, including some with direct knowledge of the operations to identify and hunt the Benghazi suspects, intelligence that could have been acted upon at times has been ignored or put on hold. Further, they say, the recent capture of Ahmed Abu Khattala — now on a ship bound for the U.S., expected to arrive this weekend — was an easy one.  “He was low-hanging fruit,” one source told Fox News. “We could have picked him up months and months ago and there was no change, or urgency to do this now.” 

“According to sources, the United States has a “target list” that initially contained about 10 suspects identified within days of the attack and eventually grew to more than 20 as American Special Forces conducted surveillance in and around Benghazi. 

The four groups on the “target list” include Ansar al-Sharia, with the top target being the “Emir of Ansar al Sharia,” Abu Sufian Ibrahim Ahmed Hamuda bin Qumu. He was a prisoner at Guantánamo Bay for more than five years and at the time was classified by analysts at the prison as “a probable member of Al Qaeda.” Despite this significant threat to American security and allies, bin Qumu was released as part of an amnesty for militants in 2008. Sources told Fox News that intelligence has shown his involvement in the attacks, and actionable intelligence has for some reason been ignored. “

The suspect arrested was at the very bottom of the list.

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5. Interesting. It seems that despite claims by Democrats, RINO’s, and the Chamber of Commerce, we have all the workers we need. And amnesty is hurting American’s  chances of getting jobs.

From NationalReview  “According to a major new report from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), net employment growth in the United States since 2000 has gone entirely to immigrants, legal and illegal. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, CIS scholars Steven A. Camarota and Karen Zeigler found that there were 127,000 fewer working-age natives holding a job in the first quarter of 2014 than in 2000, while the number of immigrants with a job was 5.7 million above the 2000 level.”

“Other significant findings include: Because the native-born population grew significantly, but the number working actually fell, there were 17 million more working-age natives not working in the first quarter of 2014 than in 2000.

The share of natives working or looking for work, referred to as labor force participation, shows the same decline as the employment rate. In fact, labor force participation has continued to decline for working-age natives even after the jobs recovery began in 2010.

Immigrants have made gains across the labor market, including lower-skilled jobs such as maintenance, construction, and food service; middle-skilled jobs like office support and health care support; and high­er-skilled jobs, including management, computers, and health care practitioners.

The supply of potential workers is enormous: 8.7 million native college graduates are not working, as are 17 million with some college, and 25.3 million with no more than a high school education.”

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